


The Goodboy Sweater

by Goodnightsammy



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben's sweater, F/M, Force Ghost Ben Solo, Grief, Heartache, Jedi Ben Solo, Loss, Post TROS, Rey Needs A Hug, Tros fix-it, ben solo force ghost, force ghost, goodboy sweater, jedi master rey, this is either the best or worst thing I have ever written and the jury is still out on this one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 19:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23852371
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Goodnightsammy/pseuds/Goodnightsammy
Summary: Rey keeps Ben's sweater after he dies. Most nights she sleeps with it.
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo, Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 65
Collections: REYLO WEEK 2020





	The Goodboy Sweater

**Author's Note:**

> This is either the best thing I have ever written, or the worst. I cried at least three times writing it, but hold out hope, at least one of those times is of joy. I hope you like this one--I had an idea in my head that I just could not escape, and this is where it led me. That being said, it is 2 in the morning and my grammar may be shot.

Rey liked to sleep with it. Some nights, she would tuck it up against her chest and hold on for dear life, pushing her nose into the fabric in hopes to catch the scent of him again—the sweat, the spice, the metallic taste of iron and space, and something green, maybe trees, or the breeze that rustled through branches. When that wasn’t enough, she would slip it on under the covers of her bunk so that no one could see. On nights where she wanted to feel surrounded by him, to feel him against her skin like he had been when he held her, when he had taken her up into his arms with that look that said _I’m sorry_ and _I love you_ and _forever_ and _always_ and so much more before the light left him and his existence faded.

Rey hadn’t been able to talk about him, not really. In the end, Ben Solo was a secret she took to bed each night, a memory that rolled around inside of her skull and kept her warmer than any blanket but not nearly warm enough. Because he had been _hers,_ and Rey didn’t know how to explain that to anyone, so she didn’t. She smiled as the Resistance celebrated. She hugged her friends. She tried desperately not to think about how it had all been _him_. How he had saved the galaxy, and all for _her_ , all because he loved her.

It was maybe a month after Exegol when Rey was jostled awake from her sleep. It was Finn, of course, staring down at her with a concerned look in his eyes. She sat up without thinking.

“You were—you were having a nightmare,” Finn explained, voice unsure, “you were saying stuff in your sleep.” Rey watched as his eyes dropped from her own, watched as they trailed down her tiny frame enveloped in what was, what had been—Realization bloomed in a red blush on Rey’s cheeks as she tucked her arms tightly against her chest. Finn’s eyes kept dropping, lower and lower as his brows folded themselves further down until they met with the hole below her stomach.

“Where did you get that?” He asked, the words coming slowly, cautious, as if he already knew the answer but didn’t really want to hear it. Rey supposed maybe he did.

“It was—” Rey started.

“Ren’s” Finn finished. Something like hurt and confusion and fire flashed in his eyes.

“No,” Rey whispered, her voice barely more than air, “it was Ben’s.”

They didn’t talk about it after that night, but he began giving her the cold shoulder more often than Rey would have liked. Finn couldn’t know what she was keeping from him, and it seemed he didn’t want to, but he didn’t call her out on it either. He didn’t question her as to why she slept with the dead Supreme Leader’s shirt every night. He didn’t try to fight her on it even as she could see the struggle churning through his mind. Maybe he sensed it was a fight he would lose, and maybe that’s why it bothered him so much.

When Rey left for Tatooine some weeks later, ready to bury the past like _he_ had told her to all that time ago, she didn’t bring the sweater with her. Rey didn’t really know what compelled her to leave it behind, tucked inside the trunk under her bunk that held the few belongings she had acquired over her time with the Resistance. She had considered bringing it, had hovered holding it above her bag for a few moments, frozen in thought, but something tugged her away. She told herself it didn’t mean anything, but she lay awake most nights without it, cold, even as the Tatooine sands still scorched with desert heat. She didn’t realize until later why—that Tatooine was a place to leave things behind, and no matter how much the look in Finn’s eyes suggested she needed to let go of the ghost of Ben, she couldn’t.

When she finally returned to the base, she dug the sweater out from the bottom of her chest and held it close. She had seen Luke and Leia on Tatooine, had seen their shimmering ghosts like mirages in the distance, and she had searched for him too. Now, she ran her fingers over the tear where she had once struck him down and wondered where he was, wandering the galaxy, and why he hadn’t once visited her.

Sometimes Rey thought she could feel him. It was like whispers of a phantom limb, really. She had spent so long being aware of his presence, a constant shadow at her side, a bond that stretched through space and across systems. It seemed only natural to mistake the shift of sun in the corner of her eye for him. It made sense that she mistook the shuffling of feet in the hall to be the low rumbles of his voice. That didn’t make it any easier. On particularly bad days, days where she could have sworn his fingers graced across her skin only to be met with empty air, she curled up into a ball inside of his sweater and let herself cry for everything she lost and what no one could ever understand.

Eventually, his scent faded. The realization was particularly damaging for Rey, who clawed at the black fabric as if balling it up between her fists could release the last remaining whispers of him. When Finn saw her the next morning, quiet with grief, plum pools spilling underneath her eyes, he did not turn away.

“What was he like, in the end,” he wondered instead, the query a curious and honest thing.

“He was everything,” Rey offered, the admission sitting between them gently, “he was strong and brave and selfless and _mine._ ”

Finn’s eyes softened, and Rey thought someone might finally understand.

“I’m—I’m sorry,” Finn breathed, the words unsure. She could still see the conflict turning over in his mind—of what Kylo Ren did and who Ben was—but his voice was easy like the breeze and the words were the only comfort she had.

“I think you would have liked him,” Rey sighed, knowing full well Finn was trying to hide a grimace at her words, “if you knew him.”

Despite his attitude, Finn didn’t protest, merely said “maybe,” before going back about his day.

It was nice, finally getting to talk about Ben after so many months. It was like the knot that coiled itself around her throat had finally begun to loosen. That night, she wrapped the sweater around her neck and imagined him holding her.

Rey dreamed of him, sometimes, and of course she did. The dreams were terrible, beautiful things that made her chest ache and her fingers twitch and her whole being yearn for what she had for only a moment. In her dreams her hands trailed down his face and across his smile. When she woke, her bed was empty, even of ghosts.

A year after it all she started speaking to him. Rey had moved on from the old Resistance base, now that the Senate was reformed and the galaxy seemed, at least for a fleeting moment, at peace. She spent nights in her own room at Maz’s rebuilt castle on Takodana—nights away from barracks with other listening ears—and Rey let herself confess little secrets to the dark as if it might be listening like it once was when his half still made them whole.

“I miss you,” she said that first night, looking up toward the ceiling as if he were among the stars, and maybe he was, “I never needed anyone. Not even on Jakku even as I waited for my parents to return. I survived then.”

She let the rest of the admission die on her tongue. _You said I wasn’t alone. You ruined me into needing you._

Maz let Rey tend the bar in exchange for lodging. Rey had stumbled in one day, wide eyed and lost as the day she arrived the first time around, and Maz had taken one look at her and sighed, “Come here child.” Plenty of strangers came and went. Some of them had broad shoulders and tall frames that made her breath hitch at first glance. Other’s moved like shadows at the corner of her vision, the slope of their nose and the cut of their jaw creating convincing silhouettes. Rey got used to it after a while; she stopped looking for him in every crowd.

Eventually, Rey knew, she would have to shake the blanket of darkness that she wrapped around her existence like his long, old cloak. Eventually she would have to go back into the universe, to rebuild what the First Order had broken, to continue what Luke had never finished. When she left Maz’s for good, she did so with a weak smile and a timid heart. She knew that the only thing spurring her forward was the knowledge that he gave himself for this. When the sun hit her face as she stepped out into the open air, Rey let herself imagine that it was him.

Rey found herself to be a sort of mother hen when it came to Jedi training. Over the course of a couple years she plucked lost children, as she had been, from every edge of the galaxy to be with her on Ahch-To. She could have taken them anywhere, she knows, but that was the place where her journey began, and it would be the same for them. Children, Rey learned, had nightmares, much like her. Some nights she’d wake to find the warm body of a child tucked in next to her from where they had crawled into her bed in the night. It wasn’t the Jedi way, she knew—then again, maybe there could be a new way now.

It was Mett, a boy she had plucked from the outer rim, who mentioned it first.

“Why do you sleep in that oversized sweater?” He had asked, eyes glistening in that way children’s do, “it has a hole.”

“That it does,” she had hummed simply, glancing down as if its presence hadn’t always been known to her, “it reminds me of an old friend.”

“Was he a Jedi too?” Mett questioned, and Rey hesitated.

“Once,” she decided, “and then again much later.”

And then the boy surprised her, in that startling sort of way that children are apt to do, “did you love him.”

“I did,” and then after a beat, “I do.”

“Did he love you?” He pressed on. And wasn’t that the question? Wasn’t that the thought that she rolled around beneath her ribs when her chest felt empty enough to implode, when her nerves felt like stripped wires in the absence of him, when the world faded to grey at the edges and she let herself sleep the whole day?

“I think so,” is the only truth she had to offer.

Rey is nearly Ben’s age when she finally sees him again. She had only been a girl, still stained with Jakku sand when she had seen him for the first time—still just a girl when she had seen him for the last. It happened slowly. She had heard giggles from the hut where the young padawans practiced their calligraphy. Mett, nearly a Knight now himself had been leading the lesson. She had stood by the door and listened to their laughter, for a moment, letting it warm up her insides, when she heard the low rumblings of a familiar voice.

Her breathing stilled as she urged her heart to quiet so she might listen a little closer. She strained her ears, trying to hear what was on the other side of the door, thinking maybe it was just a whisper, just a memory.

“I loved calligraphy when I was young,” the voice spoke again, and Rey fell to her knees. Mett, who heard the commotion opened the door, concern clear in the set of his brow.

“Are you alright, master?” He asked, holding out a hand so she might right herself.

Rey did not take it. Instead, she let her eyes trail through the doorway to where a glowing blue figure stood over the desks of two young students, body hallowed in sapphire like it had been that night. His large palms ate up the back of the chairs he had rested them on, and his stupid mess of hair had tumbled into his face.

“Ben,” Rey squeaked, and Mett turned his head to glance back at the ghost.

“He said that it would be alright—” Mett mumbled, confusion twisting his face with doubt.

Ben turned then, head tilted as if studying her, as if seeing her for the first time, and smiled, “you really shouldn’t believe every ghost you talk to,” he said then, throwing Mett a wink from across the room.

And Rey cried. She cried in a ball in the dirt. Cried for every moment she lost and every moment she had. Cried for the nights spent whispering to the dark. Cried for all the times she woke up to empty sheets and wondered why he wasn’t there with her. And something, something that felt like sparks tingled at the edge of her consciousness—like electricity and magic and the force and that utter wholeness she could once feel—and Ben was falling in front of her. He pulled her up into his arms like he once had, looked at her with his dark, open eyes that always gave him away, and held her.

“I’m sorry,” he told her, shushing and fingertips brushing against the loose strands of hair escaping from her bun. And of course she could feel him, of course he was solid and real against her skin like she always dreamed he would be, and she let him hold her like that on the ground for hours. 

**Author's Note:**

> Well there ya have it folks. I hope you enjoyed.


End file.
